Privacy Policy

Privacy Statement

fotocommunity and affiliated companies care about the protection of your personal data. Since we want you to feel save within the community we are absolutely concerned about your privacy and do whatever is needed to protect it. This includes a “personal data only if required policy”. We are subject to German laws such as the Federal Data Protection Act (Bundesdatenschutzgesetz BDSG) and the German Telemedia Act (Telemediengesetz TMG).

Our site provides links to other websites and advertisements. This privacy statement is related to our website only and not to those of third parties.

Personal Data

Information which can help to identify your identity are personal data. This includes for instance your name, address and others. General information which can’t be used to identify you (such as the browser you use) are not personal data.

Use of personal data

If you visit our website the server saves the IP-address of your internet service provider, the sites you visit within fotocommunity as well as date and duration of your visit. These data are required for security reasons. In addition to that the data are used anonymous to improve the design and function of our website. We also use Cookies for advertisement and login procedures. Cookies are tiny text files which are saved on your computer while visiting our site. They are needed to assign your user settings as well as other features regarding the site. You can turn off Cookies within your browser. If you do so it might occur that you can’t use some of fotocommunity’s features. Besides of that we save the data you used for registration as well as those for payments. Both are needed for membership reasons and the fulfillment of the contract as described in the terms of use. If you take part within the community as for example by uploading photos, videos, sounds and text we save these data in relation to you and publish them using your username.

Besides of that we want to use your data to adjust our site to your profile, to inform you about offers and services of our partners and eventually to interview you about it. You can turn off this feature within your settings.

If you unsubscribe fotocommunity you data will be deleted within two months if possible and approved by law. Especially the data you used for subscription, uploaded media and messages (support as well as fotomails) will be deleted. Law requires that some of the data such as payment data have to be saved for a longer period.

Your text board messages, comments and other things like that will be saved even if you unsubscribe. The same applies to your newsletter settings.

Newsletter

If you have signed up for fotocommunity’s Info Newsletter or Special Newsletter then fotocommunity will use the data that you have submitted in the registration process to send you the fotocommunity Info Newsletter or fotocommunity Special Newsletter. Your data will not be passed on to third parties. There is only one exception to this, namely those partner organisations who are responsible for sending out the Newsletters to users who have requested them. In these cases, however, only the minimum amount of data required for this purpose will be supplied. Our data protection provision conforms to the German legislation for data protection, i.e. Bundesdatenschutzgesetz (BDSG) and Telemediengesetz (TMG). Users who no longer wish to receive our Newsletter or promotional emails will find a link at the bottom of every email sent by fotocommunity, with instructions to click “here”, in order to unsubscribe from the Newsletter or withdraw from receiving promotional emails. Emarsys emarketing Systems AG is the company which is responsible for sending out our email Newsletter. For further information please refer to the data protection notice provided by emarsys: http://www.emarsys.com/en/privacy-policy/

Specials, Service offers and Service Providers

If you participate in specials such as polls, contests and competitions it might occur that you provide additional data which are saved by us. It might be possible that we have to pass these data to our partners as long as it is necessary for the execution of that special. The same applies to offers such as shops if provided by us or our partners. We committed our partners as well as our staff to data privacy and data secrecy.

Advertisement and Links

Our site contains third party advertisement and links to other websites out of our responsibility. In this context your IP-address, not connected to your personal data, will be transmitted to third parties. It might occur that these parties use cookies or other technical instruments to collect data about advertisement efficiency or to improve the own internet appearance. These technologies are out of our control and can’t be manipulated by us. If you have questions, please contact the regarding company and ask about their data protection.

Cookies & Google Analytics

This website uses Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. (“Google”). Google Analytics uses “cookies”, which are text files placed on your computer, to help the website analyze how users use the site. The information generated by the cookie about your use of the website (including your IP address) will be transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States. In case of activation of the IP anonymization, Google will truncate/anonymize the last octet of the IP address for Member States of the European Union as well as for other parties to the Agreement on the European Economic Area. Only in exceptional cases, the full IP address is sent to and shortened by Google servers in the USA. On behalf of the website provider Google will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of the website, compiling reports on website activity for website operators and providing other services relating to website activity and internet usage to the website provider. Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google. You may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser. However, please note that if you do this, you may not be able to use the full functionality of this website. Furthermore you can prevent Google’s collection and use of data (cookies and IP address) by downloading and installing the browser plug-in available under https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=en-GB. Further information concerning the terms and conditions of use and data privacy can be found at http://www.google.com/analytics/terms/gb.html or at https://www.google.de/intl/en_uk/policies/. Please note that on this website, Google Analytics code is supplemented by “gat._anonymizeIp();” to ensure an anonymized collection of IP addresses (so called IP-masking). Google is member of the EU/US Safe Harbor Program (www.export.gov/safeharbor/) and fulfills US data privacy terms for notification, alternatives, forwarding, security, data integrity, access and implementation.

Facebook

You also acknowledge and agree that our website uses an additional script with Facebook, as detailed in the following explanation: the first point relates to the “Like” button which appears in the detailed view of photographs. When you click on this button, your IP address and information about the photograph pages you have visited are sent to Facebook (for further details see here: http://www.heise.de/security/artikel/Das- verraet-Facebooks-Like-Button-1230906.html) but you can deactivate this on the privacy settings page (http://www.fotocommunity.de/pc/account/privacy/1). The second point relates to the Facebook plug-in which invites to you become a fan of our website on Facebook. This script is displayed in the blog and also on the log-out page. This script also sends Facebook your IP address and tells Facebook that you have visited the blog or logged off from the site.

Facebook users should be aware of the use of the Website Custom Audiences Tool of Facebook at our site. Having integrated the so-called Facebook-Pixel, we are able to identify website users as such, without further personal identification in order to be able to identify them later on Facebook. By logging in to Facebook, a non-reversible and thus non-personal checksum (profile) of your user data will be sent to Facebook for analysis- and marketing purposes.

Apps from third parties

If you use apps from third parties, then these will require access to data which is stored by us. The extent to which the creators of these apps will store and utilise such data is the responsibility of these third party providers. Please check with these providers if you want to know the extent of their data collection. A third party can obtain the following information from the interface provided by fotocommunity:

Apps which access websites directly can collect all of the information which is visible to any normal visitor of these sites.

Further forwarding

Based on laws we have to obtain we are bound to forward your personal data to government agencies (such as the office of public prosecutor) in certain cases.

Data security

We as well as our service providers care about the security of our equipment, especially our servers. We’re anxious to improve the already high standards of our service providers and keep up with technical developments. Transmissions from your computer to our servers via internet are out of our control and might be insecure. It might happen that third persons change or delete e-mails or inputs you do in forms on your website. If you want to avoid any risks regarding those transmissions you can send us ideas, wishes or suggestions by letter post to the address you find within the imprint. All of the data that you submit during registration, when you log on, and during all payment transactions is transmitted using encryption.

Data protection officer and Information

We, the operators of fotocommunity.de, fotocommunity.com, fotocommunity.es, fotocommunity.fr and fotocommunity.it committed ourselves to this privacy policy. If you have questions about the use of your personal data please contact our data protection officer. He and his team will be available for any suggestion, information request and complaint.

If requested he’ll inform you about which of your personal data are saved at fotocommunity. If the saved data are flawed, even if we continuously try to avoid this situation, we will correct them depending on your input. You can update your data on your own by using the “My pics / My media” menu.